Hydrangea Cupcakes: Ultra Victorian Birthday

For anniversary 23, it's flowers right? Well, Gone Girl never made it that far in Nick and Amy's arduous romance, so we many never know. Actually, a quick google search and a click to happy-anniversary.com tells us that traditionally, 23 doesn't get a gift, while the modern gift would be a silver plate. Apparently, in a traditional marriage you only get gifts every 5 years after 15 years. Don't be selfish?

So, my bad jokes aside, I've been itching to try out this decorating technique for several years now since I was first dazzled on pinterest or foodgawker. And its always been an amusing fun fact (for myself) that it was snowing on the first day of spring on birthday anniversary 0. Sadly enough, IT HAPPENED AGAIN THIS YEAR. I have so many mixed emotions about this happening. On one hand, I love symmetry and weird quirky patterns. Like the ones you'd read about in a John Green young adult novel. On the other hand, I am sick of being cold and having dry hands. Spring is such a tease in the you are so not worth it way. If spring were a person, I would not even be facebook friends with him/her.

 
Fortunately, even if its literally too cold outside for anything to grow, we can at least eat things that taste like flowers. Some may call a mixture of lemon-lavender cupcakes with rosewater buttercream extremely victorian, or steampunk, or just plain hipster, but I call it economical. Mainly because I have a lot of lavender and rosewater that I need to use up soon. But victorian and steampunk also sound super fun to me too, though I would think the color palette would be slightly darker.

Eating these was literally like eating a flower due to some slightly off ratios. The cupcakes were way strong on the lavender compared to lemon, so I would recommend upping the lemon zest to two lemons. The buttercream was such a mystery. Maybe it was because happy hour dulled my taste buds but I could not taste rosewater in the frosting to save my life and ended up adding at least 1-2 tablespoons in the end before giving up. But after letting the cupcakes sit overnight, it was very obvious there was rosiness coming off the cupcakes in scent and taste. So in the end, I definitely succeeded in the whole eating flowers thing.

 

Lemon Lavender Cupcakes adapted from Cupcake Project as follows (bolded lines indicate changes):

Ingredients	Instructions
1 cup (225 grams) granulated sugar	1) blend together sugar and lavender in food processor until buds are finely grounded
1 tsp lavender buds
1 3/4 cups (175 grams) cake flour, not self-rising	2) mix together cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl, then combine with 1)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (57 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature	3) mix butter into 2) on med-low for ~2-3 minutes until a fine crumb forms (will be super dry!)
2 large eggs, room temperature	4  )whisk together eggs, sour cream, oil, vanilla, and zest in small bowl until smooth, then add to 3) until just combined
1/3 cup (75 grams) full-fat sour cream
1/4 cup canola oil or vegetable oil (60 ml)
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest of 2 lemon
2/3 cup (160 ml) whole milk	5) mix milk with 4) on low until just combined
Baking Instructions
Preheat: 350 F
Fill cupcake liners slightly above half full
Bake 14 minutes, should be very light in color, with no crumb when poked with toothpick.
Remove from pan immediately and cool.

Rosewater Buttercream adapted from i am baker. I used about 0.75 of the recipe stated, and added in rosewater and vanilla. I started running out towards the end, so definitely just use the whole recipe.

Hydrangea Tutorial also via i am baker. The piping technique itself is actually pretty straightforward if you have the right tips. It took me about 2 cupcakes to get a hang of it. Note that when she says to pipe with the smaller end out, it means the smaller end out as you draw a streak of frosting parallel to the long length of the tip, not perpendicular as I initially though.

Wine and Cheese Cupcakes: White Edition

This is exciting! A new baking post! For the first time months! For the first time in forever (not really, but I just really wanted to slip in a vague Frozen reference).
I didn't have much time to bake while I was at home the past two weeks, so I had to plan the one day I set aside for any cooking/baking fun carefully. Since cupcakes brought me into the world of baking, it seemed appropriate to rekindle my baking with some.

I first saw this recipe on Cupcake Project back last summer and instantly knew that I wanted to try baking them. It seems that I continue to have a strong attraction to baking with alcohol, probably simply because its still a novelty for my oh so youthful 20s. But I have a feeling these white wine and goat cheese cupcakes will likely be baked again even if cupcakes or alcohol baking has lost its novelty for me in a few years. These are definitely some of my best baked goods of 2014. Well, this is mostly due to the fact that I was on an ice cream making spree earlier (which, rest assured, will continue).

As I was skeptical of my baking abilities, I sought to use the cheapest of white wines. Yep, the two buck chuck. I can't even remember the real name of that stuff anymore (I want to say Charles Schwab, but thats a bank that I'm pretty sure doesn't do a joint business in wine). I don't really actually know anything about wine quality, but I do know that the specific taste of wine was distinctively obvious in the cake. There was some goat cheese added to the cake batter as well, but that flavor was a bit less noticeable, or straight up lacking. I get the sense that the cake flavor varies a bit with the type of white wine used, so this might be a fun area of further exploration.
The frosting is a pretty simple variation of a typical frosting, except with goat cheese, butter and powdered sugar. I found that the frosting was a bit on the sweet side with a cream cheese tang. However, I ended up using only about 75% of the amount of goat cheese called for in the recipe so this may have been why the frosting was more on the sweet rather than tangy side.

I'm still working a bit on my frosting and decorating game a bit. The goat cheese frosting had cream cheese frosting symptoms and was a bit droopy in the first few minutes after I piped it, but it crusted fairly well after five minutes so that it stopped leaking. Though the leaking effect does have its own sort of charm to it.

Recipe from my one true baking love, Cupcake Project. Given the fidelity of the wine and cheese combo in everyday fancy dining appetizers, there must be endless ways to adapt wine and cheese into a sweet cupcake version. Cupcake Project has a chocolate/red wine cupcake that is also on my baking list, so we can do a little comparison in the future. :)

Green Tea Cupcakes: A Reminder For Scales

Photography is a pretty duplicitous medium. Or rather, all images are duplications of an already existing reality or a fragment of the imagination brought to reality by a new medium.

Most notably, we discuss the distorted reality images present in the context of body photoshopping in celebrity magazine covers and spreads. You know, the extra brushing Scarlett Johansson for being The Black Widow even if she's already hotter than 99% of the general population and badass to boot (well, as the black widow). And J Law with all her photo brushing because she's apparently "fat by hollywood standards (her quote)." But anyways, I think food photography is another nice reminder (HA that transition was terrible) that the physical appearance of something or someone does not reflect on other sensory details that define a person/something. You just have to think back to your 3rd grade cliches like "Looks can be deceiving" or "Never judge a book by its cover." 

 Likewise, food isn't just the color, the shape or apparent texture of a picture. Food is more importantly defined by its actual tastes and textures and how certain combinations excite different sensory paths. I mean, photoshopping people is one thing, but the lengths food photography goes to in order to create the image of ~fresh~ or ~steaming~ or ~crispy~ or ~fluffy~ ect is mind boggling. There are stabilizers injected into meat to keep it from limping, blow torches to achieve maximal burnt colors, meticulously placed sesame seeds for the most visually appeal spread of seeds:bun ratio. All before you even make it to the freaking computer and boot up photoshop CS10000.
While for advertising, food presentation is obviously paramount, I do think food blogging can chill a little with the picture perfect food. Visual presentation is certainly important for food (hence plating!), but I think its silly when it comes at the cost of producing something that actually tastes good. I speak from semi-personal experience that 1) pretty pictures do not mean that X blogger's recipe was actually that good, and 2) these pictures that I post are a lie that involve an embarrassing number of awkward repositioning for "optimal natural light" and "clean backgrounds" ect.

 I mean, these pictures actually aren't that good, but sometimes you'll catch a behind the scene post from a food-blogger and there is literally a mini-photo studio by some random window, or on some random rustic looking box that ISN'T EVEN IN THE KITCHEN. I guess I'm more of a fan of the in-the-moment pictures, the ones you take at the scene of the crime with sticky wisps of powdered sugar lingering on the counter, bowls with scraped out batter lingering on the sides. I don't know, I try to be as sterile as possible when I bake, but sometimes things just get complicated and you end up with some batter on the counter. Pristine pictures give the false impression that I am a far better baker than I actually am, which gives unrealistic expectations when I attempt random-ass baking projects. Like these green tea cupcakes for example. I mean you can already semi-tell that these cupcakes were a bit overcooked by the dark-brown green tint. And to top it all off, you can kinda see that these cupcakes were on the dense side, mostly likely due to a combination of overbaking, using too much flour, and/or mixing too much. Common issues I need to resolve in my cupcake baking game still.

The basic TL;DR is: food pictures can be pretty, but looks are deceiving. These cupcakes were too dense so use yo scale and don't overmix.
Cupcake recipe from Cupcake Project (she also has a red bean frosting I want to try one day!) and cream cheese frosting from Oishii Treats.

And in other news, I have a tumblr (awkwardplatters.tumblr.com) dedicated to food pictures ya'll can follow if you want to look at actually nice pictures of food.

Birthday Cake Oreo Cheesecakes: tbm Blog Birthday!

By tbm I mean throwback monday, the cousin of throwback thursday. Anyways, I interrupt my weekly posts for a special post in honor of the blog's birthday. While I'm personally not particularly keen on celebrating my own birthday in real life, today is the "birth date" of this food blog. In the world of online food blogging, it seems like a time honored tradition to bake a cake in honor of your food blog. Since people rarely finish the cakes I bake for human birthdays at home, I can't really justify a cake for an online internet entity until I find more friends and family members who will eat cake. Or until I make cake that people will want to eat.

So instead, here's a throwback post to some birthday themed baked goods I made before this blog was born. I guess you could think of this as looking through the ancestry of this blog? Back in 2012, Oreo was turning 100 and released what were supposedly ~limited~ edition birthday cake flavored Oreos to celebrate. But I'm pretty sure I've seen them around since then.

Oreos are those classic childhood cookies that all American young adults seem to have fond memories of and still love as a "sometimes treat". They're terrible for our fab fit bodies, but the nostalgia is crushing. Everyone has their own way of eating them that reminds them of that certain relative or that one summer by the lake, ect. My memory? Having to make up "my method" of eating Oreos for a third grade class assignment on how to write instructions. My family was not, and never will be, an Oreo household. So I wrote that I ate Oreos by first twisting the cookies open, scraping off the frosting with my teeth to leave a thin sheer layer of frosting, putting the cookies back together, then consuming. In the interest of full disclosure, I have never eaten an Oreo like this since turning in that assignment. The vision of the total disruption of cookie:frosting ratio is making me cringe even now.
But, anyways, despite my lack of history with Oreos, I seemed to feel that it was my calling in life to bake cheesecake Oreos using birthday cake Oreos back then. It was also my golden birthday too. So maybe it was related to that.

On a related tangent, I wonder if this blog will ever make it to its "golden" birthday. 6 years from now? Maybe. Good thing I didn't start this blog on January 31 or something.

I didn't bother to save where I found the recipe for these cheesecakes back in 2012 for some reason, but I believe the recipe was from Pink Parsley with the substitution of birthday cake Oreos instead of normal Oreos. I'm 80% certain that they still sell the birthday cake variety. I recall seeing some a few months back at Walgreens, so they're probably still around if you want to try these! Otherwise, I'd be really interested in using some of those crazy Oreo flavors they have. Like, candy corn Oreos...with pumpkin cheesecake? Do I even want to go there? Then again, I did name this blog awkward platters for a reason I guess.

Cheers to more blogging and gratuitous food pictures!

Apple Pie Cupcakes: A Tribute

Some of you might recall an earlier post where I essential wrote my "how did you meet" story for my future wedding between myself and....a cupcake truck. One of those cupcakes that I particularly love from that cupcake truck happens to an apple pie cupcake.

Incase you forgot

While I can't make ~signature swirls~ nearly as adorable as Sugar Bakery, I do have an oven and an unhealthy twitch to bake over school breaks that are in theory more like take this time to catchup so you're not screwed for finals breaks. Wait, what? Finals? Sorry, the cupcakes are a little distracting. Yes, finals. No, I don't want to take about them. And you don't want to hear about them. Especially if you're me rereading this in a few months when finals are over (Hi future self!). So, instead, lets collectively stare at these cupcakes instead.

These apple pie cupcakes were super fun to make! (I'm being serious, no sarcasm at all!) I don't make pie fillings or fillings very often, so getting to use cornstarch and watch it thicken was oddly satisfying. The cupcake itself was a pretty simple recipe. While I wanted something maybe more spiced and flavorful, I decided that if I was going to endeavor on a filled cupcake for Thanksgiving dinner, I should keep it basic (pH> 7 anyone???)

Also, its a shame whipped cream melts, because its literally the easiest way to make a fancy swirly-do topping to your cupcake. Anyways, I'll stop acting like a 10 year old and go back to my final, which I failed, right future Helen?
Apple Pie Cupcake recipe from food fanatic. Only changes were assembling style which are as pictured.

Vanilla and Vanilla: Cupcakes for a Belated Birthday

It's finally Thanksgiving break. It's finally home after 8 months. It's finally baking in a clean kitchen. It's finally time for belated birthday cakes.
While I'm personally not a fan of celebrating my own birthday (something off-putting about celebrating just turning an age older), I'm a fan of the excuse it brings to make cake. Thanksgiving break has over the past 3 years become my birthday-cake-baking-season to make up for all the birthdays I miss while away at school where kitchens don't lend themselves well to baking.

First off, vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream for a suddenly teenager little brother. Seriously, his voice was like an octave lower since the last time I saw him. He's always been a vanilla person. Like, to the point where he will eat an ice cream sandwich by eating the middle and throwing out the chocolate wafers (true story verified by the mother).



Vanilla beans are one of my favorite food obsessions. They just make everything vanilla or cake related 1000x times better. Plus, they're surprisingly satisfying to slice and scoop out. The empty pods can then be recycled and left to sit in sugar to make freaking amazing vanilla sugar. xx.

This past weekend was also the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary. While I found the episode to be quite disappointing (but not unexpectedly so), I kinda love the fact that Doctor Who has such long, deeply intertwined history across multiple generations. Since I couldn't make anything during the actual weekend, I wanted to add a little Doctor Who nod to the desserts I made this week. No one else in my family is a Doctor Who fan, but I'm willing to hijack their desserts to demonstrate my love. I originally wanted to do make mini-TARDIS to decorate the cupcakes, but that went a bit awry (think candy melts seizing thanks to the slightest amount of water getting mixed in). As an alternative, I tried decorating with white and blue swirls to represent time-vortex timey wimey things with some gold dust mixed in a well. It's a bit of a stretch, but A for effort? (lolz, jk, not in elementary school yo).



Vanilla cupcakes and buttercream recipes are from Cupcake Project, hands down my favorite food blog ever. I aspire to be as creative as she is in my life.

Dark and Stormy Cupcakes: 21st Birthdays

Ah 21. Its strange, but not unexpected, how many milestone birthdays you hit in your youth. 1st for obvious reasons. 5th because its probably around the age you start making big kid school friends. 10th because you get to says you're a decade old. 11th because its symmetric. 15th because heyyy permit time. 16th because heyyyyyyy drivers license. 18th because woot voting and democracy. 20th because congrats, you've survived teen pregnancy. And of course 21st, because heyyyy drinking.

The amusing thing is that all these age restrictions we have, 16 for driving, 18 for voting, 21 for drinking, don't really mean anything. Sure, the government says you can do something, but you as an individual are most likely somewhat different from the averaged out young adult that was used to set these age restrictions. Heck, there are probably 10 year olds who are more responsible voters than 35 year olds. Some 16 year olds may NEVER be responsible enough to drive a vehicle that kills around 30,000 people per year. Health and development wise, maybe at 21 you are still undergoing some of the important developmental changes that the averaged young adult may have gone through already. Plus, France and the UK seems to think you're done growing enough to have alcohol at 18 or 16 or whatever. So its not exactly like at the glorious age of 21 some switch flips in your body or some maturation cycle has ended that makes you bright and ready for alcohol. But we kinda celebrate it like it is. Not that most people actually abide by this rule either.

But regardless of whether its a milestone 21st, 30th, or 50th, or 75th or even 100th birthday, birthdays at any age equally deserve the same amount of cake, or in this case cupcakes. And in particular, boozy birthday cupcakes for the college-age student. I have a small obsession with making desserts with alcohol, though I'm not sure where it stems from. It's not like cakes baked with alcohol are actually alcoholic since it all burns off so no, I'm not trying to find more ways to incorporate alcohol into my 20s lifestyle. Since the birthday girl's favorite drink was a Dark and Stormy, my lovely suitemate and I baked these for her birthday party. Since she is also Canadian, and it was the night before Halloween, we attempted decorating skillz that ended up creating a spectrum of results from things that could pass off as a red and white canadian roses to things that probably resembled squished brains (mine were the squished brains obviously).

Overall I think they were fairly successful. I refrained from eating one myself to save more for the guests, but the bite I tried definitely had a rum-like bite to it thanks to the overnight rum soak I gave them cupcakes (which incidentally also made them moist). I had a small headache a little afterwards which I'm going to pretend was due to the cupcake so I can say that I had a cupcake hangover.

Recipe was from CAKE (RE)MIX with some adaptations inspired by Beantown Baker.

• Recipe based off of a box mix= necessary for short college hours.
• No one has time for fancy pineapple salsa fillings in college age kitchens.
• Buttercream was a surprising success. I'm thinking that maybe I've been making buttercream wrong all these years and need to start loving it.

Next time, I'd love to try to bake the cake from scratch using the recipe on Beantown Baker. I saw it on several other websites and it looks great!

A Story of Cupcakes: The Genesis of My Devotion

New Haven is apparently pretty well known for its food culture. As someone who follows not one, not two, but THREE food trucks on twitter and frequently checks such social media sites for their locations, I think I would have to agree. Oh, plus, we have 5 frozen yogurt stores within a 2 mile radius of one another. The fact that all of them are still currently open and operating probably says something about New Haven.

One of the best trucks, and the one I probably stalk the most is the Sugar Bakery cupcake truck. Heck, I don't even have to stalk them because I have their schedule memorized by heart. I've even gone above and beyond cupcakes and have had ordered cakes via phone from their bakery to pickup on the truck when its in town. While I know a lot of people are obsessed with cupcakes for the simple fact they're mini-cakes and so hip, these are legit some of the best cupcakes I've ever had. I've gone to a variety of other cupcake shops and trucks whose cupcakes while good, weren't mindblowing. They honestly weren't that much better from like, a Betty Crocker mix or something I could make (as in, my cupcakes are on par with Betty Crocker or worse). Sugar Bakery is the sole exception.

Clockwise from top left: Pumpkin Cheesecake, Tiramisu, Apple Pie, Carrot Cake

I can vividly remember the first time I realized Sugar Bakery cupcakes were special. It was summer 2012. The truck was brand new and I had just ordered a sherbet cupcake because it was late in the day and not many other flavors were remaining. This was the second cupcake I was trying after having tried some other one (probably cheesecake) that was pretty damn good. Now, when you think of sherbet, you think of that distinctive cool, sweet fruitiness that's light and not too dense. How could a cupcake possibly encapsulate that? Taking the cupcake out of its box, I fully expected to be disappointed with excessively sweet sugar and no sherbet. Instead, a whole new world of glorious tastes and cupcakes entered. IT ACTUALLY TASTED LIKE A GODDAMN SHERBET ICE CREAM. It obviously wasn't cold, but it was SO much like sherbet that if ice cream was room-temperature and cake-like, this would have been it. This was an entire new revelation. An entire new standard upon which all cupcakes would be compared to. If a sherbet cupcake was possible, a sherbet cupcake that truly captured all the essence of that sweet ice cream and its picture-esque summer time beaches, swim suits, flip flops and sun-kissed hair, there were no limits in what we as a human race could achieve.

White Chocolate Raspberry

It is because of that sherbet cupcake, I have no qualms about buying more than one cupcake when I see that truck. While it is no longer summer and sherbet has retired till the next summer, Sugar Bakery's fall cupcakes are better than any pumpkin beer or pumpkin latte you could get anywhere.

Apple Pie

Pumpkin Chai Cupcakes: Warm Things I Love

TWO posts in one day? TWO blog worthy baking adventures in ONE day?
I know, I'm making up for my 4 month dryspell away from baking thanks to the MCATs that were not to be. I'm also on a mission to bake as much as I can before I leave for Brussels this week where baking would be somewhat impractical given I should be spending my time eating waffles and chocolates and drinking beer.

Things I adore about these cupcakes:

• The liners which I got from a very very dear friend for  a  the birthday last year. (wait, I only have one birthday per year)
• The chai buttercream, which tasted surprisingly not only like chai, but GOOD considering that I usually hate basic butter+powdered sugar buttercreams.

Seriously, ya'll just gonna have to embrace pumpkin flavors in the heat of summer as the new cool. Haha. See how funny that was? Ok, no. Sorry. My mistake. Pretend I'm speaking like the Doctor a la Matt Smith and I'm totally allowed to blab on and on and on like this. (hand motions too).

Cupcake+frosting recipe from Dessert for Two. Obviously scaled to 2 persons for the blog, but that frosting was so good, I might have to scale it up for my baking partay. I'm also a bit embarrassed to say I even completely copied her piping job too. Imitation is the best form of flattery?
as you may have noticed, I haven't actually commented on how the cake tasted. mainly because I never tried it after all the other sugar I've consumed today. My taste testing minions  friends seemed to enjoy them though!